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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29500524">The Long Parted</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu'>Nununununu</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Bittersweet, Curses, Dwarf/Elf Relationship(s), Found Family, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Magic, Role Reversal, Storytelling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:27:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,310</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29500524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hush now, child, and I will tell you a story. Just close your eyes and rest your head upon my knee. It will make the rains pass quickly and then you can sleep under my old dragon-scale cape.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>DinCobb Valentine's Bingo 2021</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Long Parted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the DinCobb Valentine's bingo squares 'fantasy realm AU', 'role swap' and 'Cobb finding the child first' (although this isn't in-universe so the last might not count) :) Plays around a little with 1st/2nd/3rd person POV</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>
  <em>Hush now, child, and I will tell you a story. Just close your eyes and rest your head upon my knee. It will make the rains pass quickly and then you can sleep under my old dragon-scale cape. </em>
</p>
<p>Once long ago, the higher powers lived closer to our realm and took an interest in it on a grander scale, by which I mean they liked to play their games not just with the likes of us, but with whole planets they strung on gossamer chains like those blown glass starballs you sigh over and convince me to make.</p>
<p>
  <em>No child, we can’t go and gaze at them tonight; look how it’s storming! Let us stay by our hearth, sending sparks up the chimney to ward off the rains. The starballs will be safe until morning comes and I will make more for you then.</em>
</p>
<p>Now one of these starball planets had been verdant once, a lush green, grassy place where all manner of people flourished, come together from the far corners of the realm and sworn to uphold the same creed. The powers saw this and they hungered, for what do they crave most but discord and discontent.</p>
<p>
  <em>Heartache and longing, yes, you are right child; I see your papi has been telling you some of the sadder stories. Always a melancholy sort, that dwarf. This is a sad tale too in its way, but there is joy in it as well, you’ll see.</em>
</p>
<p>Now the ruler of this planet was once a metalsmith long before he became king, much in some ways like I have become a smith of sand and fire and glass – yes thank you, I do love how you love my little creations that shine now with bronze and red and gold. I string them above your bed to keep you safe in your sleep, my lovely, and to ward off the hungry darkness, lanterns glowing with flickering candlelight to see off bad dreams.</p>
<p>
  <em>What was that, you say? I am rambling? Goodness, my child, one’s mind can be allowed to wander at my age! But come now, let us continue the tale. </em>
</p>
<p>So there was the dwarven smith, reluctant king and warden of his once verdant planet, all alone after the powers saw it ravaged. All alone except for the dead, who existed trapped –</p>
<p>
  <em>Oh, you don’t want to start there either, with the loneliness and the ghosts? Perhaps you should tell me how your papi told it then, although I am certain those things will come in it; they are an essential part of the story. </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>All right, you want it in my words instead? As it is me telling it, yes. So say where it is you want me to begin and I will tell you how our little family met. </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When the hunter slides through the spaces in the long stretches of the realm that have grown empty as a result of the higher powers’ games, that once green grassy planet is nothing more than one of the glassblower’s starballs. It is lifeless though, blasted smooth and shiny, nothing left to it except for a single tall mountain in the far distance. A solitary peak the hunter turns his face towards and then his feet.</p>
<p>He walks and he walks and he walks, weapons on his back and at his belt, beneath his shimmering dragon-scale cape. Ever-burning fire tickles at the ends of his pale hair and laps at his shoulders; his boots leave behind sandy footprints upon the glass surface of the ruined world. He walks until he can walk no more and then continues on further, and there is nothing here still, no twisted echoes of nightmare creatures sidling out of that nothingness to fly at him like they have upon other ravaged planets. There is only the beat of his burning heart and the small warm life of the child cradled inside his cuirass, one of his hands upon the curve of the carved bone of the armour as if to soothe the little one within.</p>
<p>When he eventually draws closer to that lone mountain, he sees a figure there waiting. A dwarf king, strong and sturdy within bright silver armour, deadly for all that it’s beautifully crafted, blue lightning dancing over the plates.</p>
<p>“I have been searching for you for a long time,” The hunter informs him when his feet come to a halt. The deserts of his long destroyed homeworld leaking ever faster from his boots, spirals of sand growing around him the longer he lingers there in one place, free hand opening and closing a little as he contemplates the full helmet the dwarf wears as if in place of a face.</p>
<p>“Elf,” The other returns, voice as hollow as if it comes directly from the metal of the helmet, a rumble of thunder to it, the storm dancing along that armour in time, “I too have been waiting.”</p>
<p>“The elves are all gone from this realm,” The hunter might, in another life, have shaken his head, the flames in his hair flaring with the movement. As it is, his hand simply tightens gently around the little one still tucked within the bone cuirass, “As are so many other creatures, all lost to the powers’ whims. The tales tell of such splendour to be found on this world once.” He stirs now, glancing around at the glistening rainbow of the glass disrupted only by the mountain and the dwarf in front of him and the knee deep sand he now stands within, “I see the lives you used to rule over are still here.”</p>
<p>“I am no ruler,” The dwarf steps forwards, walking in a strange path that would seem arbitrary except for the fact that there are ghosts under the surface of the glass planet and he does not step on them, faces that well up to press against the underside, blank and shapeless with death, “Do not look.”</p>
<p>“I won’t,” Averting his gaze from the ghosts, the hunter considers the other figure, “You are warden of this place then, if you aren’t king.” He has been tasked with finding the authority over this planet, after all and to an extent. That is not the only reason, of course.</p>
<p>“There is nothing to stand guard over,” Lightning leaps out from the dwarf’s shoulders as he shrugs just as slightly as the hunter had moved his hand, “And everything. You are here to fight me.” He produces a long spear from his back as he speaks and the lightning darts back down to encompass it.</p>
<p>“I am,” The hunter agrees, “You have something I am required to obtain.”</p>
<p>“You can take it,” The warden shows him the sword of pure darkness strapped to his belt on a sigh; the blade the hunter has been charged with acquiring at any cost, “I have no wish for it.”</p>
<p>“And then could you leave?” Sand scatters near the toes of warden’s silver-capped boots as the hunter steps closer in return, careful not to place his feet upon any of the dead faces, patterns opening up in the desert spilling from him now, similarly avoiding the ghosts, “Could come with us, I mean.” His dragon eyes search the face of the silver helmet as if there are features there to read. For all the promise of fighting, he has not reached for his weapons, sparks from his fire seeking to twine with starbursts of blue lightning to create something never before seen.</p>
<p>“Us?” Returning the spear to his back, the warden tips his helmeted head.</p>
<p>“Us,” The hunter confirms and opens the bone cuirass to show him the tiny green child curled up in soft leaves within, the last survivor of the world before this one, a forested place once filled with spirits.</p>
<p>“A baby?” Lightning drains out of the warden as he reaches forwards to touch with tentative fingertips; draining out of him and into the sand at his feet, creating a strange sculpture there neither hunter nor dwarf realise about until later, but both of them nonetheless feel a sense of forming – something new indeed, something their magic merges together to make.</p>
<p>“As I said, we have been looking for you for a long time,” Untucking the sleeping child very gently, the hunter places the tiny bundle in the warden’s arms. Heartache and a little wistfulness at the sight.</p>
<p>“If either I give you the sword or you win it from me, you will become bound to this place,” The dwarven warden pushes up the helmet off to better see the face of the child. Glancing up at the hunter after with the last of the lightning left in his gaze. The power not gone, but banked down now, safe where it can’t harm the slumbering babe, just as the hunter’s fire doesn’t burn either of them, “I would leave, but you would be forced to stay.”</p>
<p>“Would you return with the child sometimes?” Flames gutter out for a moment as the hunter bites his lip, “Or would you leave me here forever as the new king – or warden – of nothing but ghosts trapped under a rainbow of glass with not even this child against my heart to remind me that, unlike the rest of our peoples, we are still living?”</p>
<p>The child stirs then, opening great dark eyes to gaze up at them both.</p>
<p>“I won’t leave either of you,” The dwarf’s voice rumbles with that thunder, more strange sculptures leaping up again at both of their feet, “We will stay here together.”</p>
<p>The hunter is already shaking his head in understanding and grief, “You must know well of curses. You know it can’t be. I am compelled to roam rootless and worldless unless in by my gaining the sword and becoming bound here you take my place.”</p>
<p>“Curses can be broken,” The silver armour reflects the red glow of the hunter’s fire, “I will find a way to break it, I swear.”</p>
<p>“I have searched for many years,” Sorrow lines the hunter’s face and fills his dragon eyes, “I have walked over and again in the spaces left in the realm by the powers and sought a way out of my endless quest, and have only ever been told to <em>obtain the weapon from the reluctant king</em>. I would not pass my ruin onto you.”</p>
<p>“Here,” Transferring the child into one arm, the dwarf places the handle of the blade in the hunter’s hand, “You have obtained it. I am not ruined.”</p>
<p>“But now I am stuck here and you must leave,” The hunter gazes in pain at the dwarf and then little one as the child reaches for him, “That feels much like ruin to me. You mustn’t stay, little one, although I wish you both would. You must go with your new father and find a way to end the higher powers’ games, and be free.”</p>
<p>“And come back to you after, I swear this as well,” The dwarf leans in, free hand clutching at the bone cuirass to bring the once-elf down lower, low enough to press their foreheads together, “Take this child I would call our son, if you will permit me such a claim, and make no more talk of him coming with me. I would cherish his presence and trade my life for his upon one look at his face, I feel this in my heart, but to keep him from you who have such a bond with him would be cruelty.”</p>
<p>“You will come back for us both then?” The hunter clings onto the pauldrons, the dwarf’s cowl, whatever parts of him he can reach, “Our son and me.”</p>
<p>“I will return and take the sword back from you, if I haven’t yet found the way to break the curse, and then you can once again go free for a while,” The dwarf proclaims, an almost shy smile creeping onto his face, “We can take turns.”</p>
<p>“But the three of us will never be together until it’s broken,” Hugging the child as the little one murmurs and crawls back into his arms, the former hunter – now warden – protests. Takes a breath in after and straightens, determination brightening the flames licking his hair, “All right, then. Yes. You take your turn; go and search the realm for the answer. Come back here when you need to rest and care for our child while I continue our quest.”</p>
<p>“All right,” The dwarf touches the child’s cheek, his smile deepening at the little one’s coo, and then grasps the new warden’s hand as if he never wants to let go, the other holding back tight in return.</p>
<p>But he must let go, they both must.</p>
<p>And they do.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>And that is the way, my lovely, that it has ever since been. You and I stay here while your papi searches the places between the stars, or I leave on his return to do the same. We will succeed – we have already found a way to build our little house out of the nothing; we have already brought back the rains. Even if they are acid, yes – don’t make that face at me. The powers lash out at us like that and in bad dreams, but we carry on. We persevere. </em>
</p>
<p>But when will the three of us ever be together, you ask. It has been hundreds and hundreds of years!</p>
<p>
  <em>Ah. Have hope, my dear, have hope.</em>
</p>
<p>The weight of the sword heavier in my hand than anything in all of the realms should be, I place it over the hearth, my gaze straying over to the lanterns strung above our sweetly sleeping child’s bed. When the time comes again for my absence, I hold close to me the thought of warm sparks of blue lightning illuminating the delicate glasswork instead.</p>
<p>
  <em>Someday.</em>
</p>
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